Starting next spring, students at Colorado’s 13 community colleges will be guaranteed admission to any Arts and Sciences program at the University of Colorado if they have completed 30 semester hours and earned at least a 2.7 grade-point average.

“We believe this program is the only one of its kind in the United States,” said CU president Bruce Benson. “For our state in the nation to be competitive, we need an educated workforce, and this program will help achieve that.”

This is a very positive message to the 135,000 community college students in Colorado, said Nancy McCallin, president of the Colorado Community College System.

“It says that if you perform well in a community college, you can transfer to an institution like the University of Colorado,” she said. “Forty-four percent of students who come to us do so because they want to transfer.”

There is a particular benefit to low-income, first-generation community college students, said Ryan Ross, director of the Academic Student Support and Education Transition Center at the Community College of Denver.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “When you’re dealing with low-income, first-generation students who are the first person in their family to go to college, the uncertainty is what’s really scary.”

Not only does the new program give them certainty, but it also gives them a goal that’s highly motivational, he said.

“They know 2.7 means, ‘I can continue my education journey,’ ” Ross said. “Now they can transfer, and once they’re there, they can demonstrate their grades and go up to the school of business or the school of law. So now the realm of possibility is wide open.”

CU Regent Stephen Ludwig, D-Lone Tree, is credited with getting the program off the ground. He began advocating for it in 2007 and just kept pushing, motivated by personal experience.

Before getting his bachelor’s degree in 1993 from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, he attended Diablo Valley College in California and Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs while working full time.

In his campaign to get guaranteed admission approved, he talked to many people and found the biggest obstacle was a certain mind-set.

“People have an attitude about community college students that is outdated, that they are not disciplined or smart enough, because if they were, they’d be in a four-year school,” he said. “That is simply not true.”

McCallin said statistics show that students who transfer from community colleges “do as well if not better than those students who are native to the system of higher education in the four-year arena both at CU and elsewhere in the state.”

Their GPAs and graduation rates are also similar, if not higher, she said.

“When the baby-boom generation retires, we need to have a qualified workforce to meet the demands of business,” she said. “This seamless transfer of guaranteed admissions is a really positive step in that direction.”

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